This is my port of the original Super Mario Bros, crammed into just under 24KB of a Pico-8 cartridge. (spritesheet memory is unused)
It includes all original levels, music, minus world, and the second quest. One slight simplification due to the token limit is that instead of an alternating 2-player mode, you can just choose to play as Mario or Luigi.
It's basically complete, but could use some playtesters, please let me know if you come across any serious issues or bugs.
Special thanks to:
- Jwinslow23 for composing the music and many of the sound effects
- Zep for his PX9 compression system
- Thisismypassword for the Shrinko-8 minifier
- Nick N. Bruns of NESmaps.com for documenting level maps
I can't tell what should be considered a bug versus what should be considered artistic license.
You kept all the level designs the same, but every game object is at least slightly different, with many of them having completely different behavior. That includes the walls and moving platforms. It also means that many of the original design choices don't actually function. Honestly this feels to me like the result of looking up how the game works on gamefaqs instead of playing the original.
I think keeping the lives system but not the continue system is a particularly odd design choice.
Hmm, I'm kind of surprised to hear that, since I primarily gathered info on how the game worked by playing the original version. Any differences are due to the fact that I built the code from scratch without knowing exactly how everything originally worked. I also had to find approaches that worked under tight token constraints the original didn't have, which probably favored different approaches.
As for the continue feature, I never knew about that until Googling it just now. Wish I had known about it as a kid, but Gamefaqs wasn't around back then. I agree it's not a perfect 1:1 port, but as previous versions had only a handful of levels and other drastic simplifications, I don't think it's a bad version.
Perhaps I should clarify. I wasn't trying to say it's bad. I would've gone with adjusting the level designs myself, but I can understand if nostalgia or respect for the original or really anything like that takes priority.
Also the parts that don't work as originally designed probably won't be noticed by players who haven't recently played the original game. For example, in world 1-2, you'd have to find the 1up in the roof and also try to get it from below before you'd have any way of seeing that the path it takes if it hits a 1-tile gap in the roof is not the same. In another case, I don't know how many players would know even one behavior for the squids much less both of them.
I understand, guess it's a combination of being a somewhat more casual player who doesn't usually go for tricks and speed runs, and working under tight technical constraints. If something behaves pretty closely to the original in most scenarios, different behavior in a special case isn't high on the list of things to fix when I'm hitting the token limit.
Guess there's also the fact I tried to make it look as much as possible like the original, so any differences stick out more. My goal was a very familiar version that played pretty close to the original, but I'm not worried about enabling accurate tricks or shortcuts.
Ay the game released! I played bits and pieces of it, and I must say, it is an amazing recreation, although there are some things that are inaccurate to the NES version:
-
Lakitu Behavior: Lakitus normally duck and hide their head after throwing 3 spineys that are still on-screen (due to NES object limitations) and immediately throw an egg after one spiney either falls into a pit or is killed.
- Mario is a tiny bit slipperier than the original (similar to Luigi's slipperines in The Lost Levels). It's not a game-ruining error, but it does make some jumps tricky.
Hope this helps!
Very quick edit: Instead of "Player 1/2 Game", use "Mario/Luigi game" (like in SMB: The Lost Levels). That way, there is more clarity and nobody is gaslit into thinking that there is multiplayer ;).
in the original smb, when you jump into say, a empty question mark block, your vertical momentum is halted, right? But when you jump into the edge, you're supposed to slip out of the block! this is to make collisions feel more natural
also when you have the fire flower, you can only shoot 2 a time, not 3
I'll look into the fireball thing. As for the soft-edge collision, I'm not sure how to make that work, can anyone point to an explanation or code implementation of it?
Oh, you're willing to add the soft-edges? I didn't bring it up cause it seemed like it might take too many tokens. That would really help with getting the mushroom in 1-4.
The first way that comes to mind is to use % to check what pixel the player is on versus the tile with a brick. If it's a pixel that's close enough to the edge of the neighboring tile, then the neighboring tile can be checked for a gap and the result of using % can also be used to know how far to move the player.
I'm pretty sure the original games all did that in every direction, which is why mario can traditionally run straight across 1 tile gaps.
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